We handled the How, sort of, now let’s take a quick look at the Why of writing Herringwood Messiah because I didn’t actually want to write a series. One could argue that two books does not a series make, but work has begun on the third, so it’s definitely going to be a trilogy.
Some people just cheered at that, some people sighed. I hope you’re the former.
So, I always found a series—specifically a trilogy—rather cliché. Can’t really substantiate it either. I’ve always just preferred a finished story. A start, a middle bit, and a proper ending. It’s becoming increasingly common, especially in movies, to release half a thing and then leave the audience hanging for a year.
Why, man? I’ve set aside an hour-and-a-half, or two, to watch a thing. I don’t want to be really into it and then get told I’m gonna have to wait until I’ve basically forgotten the whole unimpressive piece of shit to see how it ends.
It’s a psychological trick that apparently helps make producers more money. You’re supposed to be so invested in the story that you’ll pay for a second ticket to watch the rest of it.
It does the exact opposite for me. I stopped caring about what happened across the spider-verse the moment they rolled credits on what would otherwise have been a good movie. It’s not like they couldn’t fit a story in one complete movie. Time isn’t the problem either, because that Marvel dreck regularly goes on for two-and-a-half hours and people just gobble it up.
Ehm… Let’s nip this rant in the bud.
My stories will have a beginning, middle, and end. Technically it should be possible to read them without prior knowledge of the other books, though it helps if you have.
The reason I wrote Herringwood Messiah is because I had plans for a story set about 500 years in the future, but the idea I had for it wasn’t going to work if Eddie didn’t do certain things in his time, so that had to be done in a second book.
Unfortunately, all those ideas had to be cut for pacing or sheer stupidness, leaving me with a story that pretty much did none of the things that started me writing it.
The plans for the Future Souls book are still there, though they make no sense at all without a few steps between, so a third book is pretty much a must. At the moment it looks good in the broad sense, though it looks like it’ll have an open ending. As discussed before, that is not an option.
And also not something I need to discuss here because I was going to tell you why I wrote a second book.
Well… The point is, I needed a story to lead in another story, but the story didn’t do that.
I could have just written that. Saved you the trouble of reading all the above.